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Monthly Archives: June 2012

Today was my last day at work. I am now entering a three month period of rest, relaxation and prep before taking on the persona of ‘Mom’. There are many words to describe the state I now find myself in –‘unemployed’ being one – but as I’ve mentioned before I’m really looking forward to this time.

Moving to Hatfield was a strategic decision for Col and I, and the first step in our plan to enable me to be a stay-at-home mom when the time came. Moving from a huge corporate company to working in a church was a big change, and looking back on it I’m surprised by many things. Continue reading →

Yesterday we went for our 4D scan – big landmark in the preggie world as any mom-to-be will tell you! I’ve always found them to be quite weird looking (and don’t always know what I’m looking at), but I found myself getting excited about ours the other day because it’s the first time we get a bit of an idea of what Speckle will look like.

When the big moment arrived though, Speckle was hiding his face behind his hands. We tried a bit of belly-jiggling to get him to move, but he was in the middle of an afternoon nap and was having none of it (let’s hope he sleeps so soundly when he’s no longer in his mommy’s tummy)!

The pic below was taken mid-yawn so you can see his little nose and mouth. As my friend Sophia says though, it’s quite nice that we didn’t get a good shot as it will be all the more exciting when he does make his grand entrance. And I’ll be honest, these scans still look weird to me even if it is our baby, so I’m struggling to connect the image with the bambino in my belly.

In one of the most vicious onslaughts yet, the preggie brain has attacked again …

This morning I washed my hair and was half way through styling it when my hair dryer bombed out. I refused to panic and got on with doing my make-up. Sometimes its switches off because it overheats but if you leave it for a few minutes it recovers, so I thought maybe it would work when I next tried it. No such luck. I was now running out of time, and in desperation tried a few colleagues to see if someone could bring a hair dryer to work. No one answered their phones. Admitting defeat I made a hat plan and steeled myself for walking out into the four degree morning with wet hair.

Late for work, I grabbed my bag and rushed for the door, only to notice on the way out that the plug for my trusty hair dryer was no longer in the socket …

As I’ve mentioned previously, my year has been neatly divided into quarters and Quarter 3 has been set aside as the ‘Get ready for Speckle’ phase. Knowing that I’d have some time off before Speckle arrives means that I have done very little to prepare for him to date. The nursery plans are still fairly unformulated in my head; I haven’t started educating myself about the birth and what happens next; any parenting questions and concerns are being added to the list of ‘Questions for Quarter 3’.

However, being the planner that I am I have done a few things and one of the most exciting is the acquisition of ‘The Pink Chair’. This is a lazy boy that my parents bought when Trev and I were small and it was a big part of our childhood. I remember it living in my parent’s bedroom when we lived in Mondeor and if we were really sick, or woke up with a nightmare, Mom would make us a bed in the Pink Chair and we’d spend the night in there. (A sneaky plan as it was seen as a treat for us, but probably greatly increased the quality of sleep my parents had. Hats off to you Mom and Dad!)

It has since been reupholstered and so needs a new name – any suggestions? When we went up to Tzaneen in May we brought it back with us and it’s now ensconced in my reading nook. As this same nook will soon be the downstairs baby corner and breast feeding zone the chair is well positioned to feature in the memories of the next part-Goodwin generation.

In my last post I dropped a bit of a bomb shell in that you might not be aware that I have decided not to go back to work after Speckle is born. What’s more, I’m finishing work at the end of this very month so will have at least two and half months before the little one arrives.

Being a stay-at-home mom for a few years has always been a dream of mine. Fortunately, it was a dream Col and I shared, and early on we started putting things in place to make it a feasible option when the time came.

Since maximising maternity leave is not something I have to consider, I’ve decided to stop working a few months before Speckle is due, and gave my notice for the end of June. Only after I’d done this did I discover that this would leave me with almost exactly the same amount of time off that my mom had when she was expecting me. (I was born in the middle of March, and she finished working in December.)

It seems that the adage, ‘Like mother, like daughter’ is indeed true in this case. But then, there is so much that I admire in my mom that this is something I claim with great pride!

I’ve seriously neglected my blog in the last while (due to lack of time, not lack of material), so here’s a bit of a catch up …

I was recently reflecting on how well this year has been divided up for me. Because I fell pregnant at the very beginning of the year, Trev and Marlies’ visit provided a delightful watershed at the end of my first trimester. Back from that two week break, I threw myself into Quarter 2 – my second trimester, but also my last three months at work (more on this in a future post). Quarter 3 starts in two weeks and is the ‘Get ready for Speckle’ phase. Quarter 4 will begin when Speckle arrives, and only time will tell how that goes.

I’ve very grateful for this neat division. Having such a clear focus for each quarter has really allowed me to deal with everything one step at a time. Of course, no sooner had I started sharing this epiphany with a few friends, than the whole system fell apart!

Various circumstances have resulted in an absolute manic few weeks at work recently. In the middle of that, I was suddenly overwhelmed with a whole load of parenting related fears, and my previously well-disciplined mind refused to put them on ice until Quarter 3. For about two weeks Pregzilla was on the rampage, and I have to say a huge thank you to Colin who did a stellar job of taming the beast.

In the midst of this turmoil I was reminded of Isaiah 40:11, the last part of which reads: ‘He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young.’ It was a huge encouragement to me, but also a bit of a reprimand because gentleness is not something I treat myself with very often. So I’ve fallen back on my first trimester lessons of reprioritising and being kinder to myself and I’m glad to say that, as a result, Pregzilla is back in her cage.

(Sjoe, bit of a deep post that one, but then you my dear reader, have gotten off lightly so far!)